Books for negotiating an ongoing working relationship

Some negotiations end with people going their separate ways. Others set up Monday's work together. If you will keep relying on a supplier, customer or operating partner, the agreement and the way you discuss it both matter. Choose reading for the continuing relationship you want to understand, not just the concession you hope to win.

Start with Infinite Upside for an owner's account of ongoing operating agreements. Getting Together addresses relationships that must withstand difficulties; Difficult Conversations focuses on raising the hard issue itself.

1. Infinite Upside: an agreement people must keep performing

   By Vijay Sheth.

   Chapter 9 of Infinite Upside: Building Wealth With Room to Live describes relationships among asset owners, operators and businesses bringing customers. They contribute different things and retain different obligations. A promise that looks attractive to one participant still needs to be workable for the person making it.

   Choose the memoir if you want to follow the operating relationship behind the negotiated terms. Sheth considers what another business can sustain through a weak period, and what his company still needs to do if a payment arrives late. The point of interest is the relationship after the agreement has been signed.

   Read for what each side continues supplying. If you want to examine an actual package of terms, the separate negotiation reading works through that practical question.

2. Getting Together: building a relationship that can handle difficulty

   By Roger Fisher and Scott Brown.

   Getting Together: Building Relationships As We Negotiate is presented by Penguin through initiating, negotiating and sustaining enduring relationships. Its stated focus makes it worth investigating when today's disagreement belongs to a longer working arrangement.

   Imagine an invented bakery owner who expects to keep buying from the same supplier. Delivery changes have become contentious. She wants to think about the working relationship in which those changes are discussed, rather than treat each request as a fresh contest.

   Her sample question could be: does this discussion help me understand what kind of relationship I want us to be able to rely on? The reading purpose is a relationship that can carry another disagreement. It does not establish whether this supplier can meet the bakery's actual requirements.

3. Difficult Conversations: approaching the issue you have been avoiding

   By Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen.

   Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most addresses challenging discussions, including negotiations with clients. The publisher's description of the third edition places understanding, emotions and learning within that communication task.

   The invented bakery owner might instead know that she wants to preserve the relationship but be avoiding the conversation about repeated disruption. She worries that naming the problem will sound like an accusation. That gives her a more immediate reason to investigate a book about having a difficult discussion.

   Try a sample with the subject you need to raise in mind. Look for whether its treatment helps you describe what you do not yet understand about the conversation. This is a choice of reading emphasis: both books concern relationships, and neither can supply the other person's explanation before you hear it.

Choose before the next conversation

Ask which uncertainty is sending you to a book: the relationship you want to develop, the conversation you are avoiding or the operating commitments underneath the disagreement. Use it to choose which treatment you want to keep reading.

If you are choosing a business partner, the partnership-reading selection has a different purpose. If you are learning the sequence of a business purchase, use the acquisition-reading selection.

For an owner's account of agreements that must keep working after the conversation ends, read Infinite Upside. The opening passage lets you try the voice before following the later operating relationships.